There’s nothing Brits love more than tucking into a portion of freshly made chips fries and a steaming cut of battered fish by the seaside, but in a sight less seen, one English beach found its pebbled shores awash with a layer of thinly sliced frites, garnished with a smattering of onions.

Thousands of bags of French fries washed up on a beach near the southern coastal town of Eastbourne last week after a shipping container carrying food packages came ashore, enveloping the area in uncooked oven fries.

Joel Bonnici, who lives in Eastbourne and helped with the cleanup, told the BBC he “had to look twice” while walking last Saturday in Falling Sands, near the Beachy Head cliffs.

“The beach looked like the Caribbean golden sands,” he told the outlet.

“In some areas the chips were two-and-a-half feet deep into the ground.

“Among the unusual sightings of washed up items — including onions found earlier this week — nothing compares to this.”

A local beach sustainability group caught wind of the “chip wreck” and organized a cleanup.

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“We went to falling sands to help the community clear up the mess from a shipping container that has spilled thousands of bags of chips and onions all over this vulnerable stretch of land,” Plastic Free Eastbourne wrote in a Facebook post.

The group of seasoned volunteers are accustomed to picking up all kinds of trash, from scrap metal to fishing rods, but literal sea-salted fries were an unexpected first and posed several challenges, including separating the broken plastic bags the fries were transported in from the food waste, as well as removing the washed-up shipping container from which they spilled.

“Removing the plastic bags is a priority,” Bonnici added.

He said a small colony of seals living nearby was at risk of harm from the plastic left by the container.

“I scuba dive quite regularly, and I know what seals are like,” he said. “If they see the bags they will play with them or try and eat them.”

In total, three shipping containers washed up in East Sussex on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for HM Coastguard told the outlet that a container also washed up off the coast of Littlehampton, West Sussex, about 58 km from Eastbourne, and still others in neighbouring beach towns, including Selsey, Newhaven, Rustington, Rottingdean and Beachy Head.

The containers washed ashore after 16 toppled off a cargo ship near the Isle of Wight last month, and days later, several containers fell from two more ships nearby.

Eastbourne Borough Council thanked staff and volunteers for helping with the cleanup efforts.

“I would like to thank the volunteers who are out helping us clean up the beach in Eastbourne and along our seafront,” Coun. Stephen Holt, leader of Eastbourne Borough Council, wrote on Facebook.

“We know how important our seafront is, and so to ensure the clean-up is completed as quickly as possible,” he continued.

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